OMOKOROA ITM BILLFISH BONANZA 2019 REPORT

It was fantastic this year to have what looked like a brand new naming sponsor for this year’s Billfish Bonanza with Omokoroa ITM coming aboard.  In fact it’s the same Oregon ITM group that incorporates the Mount ITM that leant their support to last year’s event, so again we have been privileged to receive such wonderful backing for what is our last blue water event for the summer.

This year the forecast looked outstanding and although it didn’t live up to its promise, the weather didn’t seem to dampen the enthusiasm of the 139 anglers that turned up this year. With about 10 boats deciding to take the starboard turn out the entrance and take the long trip towards the eastern BOP. The rest of the teams seemed to concentrate their efforts on the High Duty Plastics, Port of Tauranga and Tarpaulin Makers grids that had all been producing very large striped marlin prior to the tournament.

Thanks to Shimano NZ the prize stage was looking packed with a wide range of high end shimano rods and reels including 5 Talica 25 combos for the tag and release billfish prizes, again encouraging those on the water to be tagging their fish.

Over the three days six striped marlin were tagged, many lost and seven marlin weighed in at the Club.  For a couple of anglers this was their first marlin and a bucket-list moment! A special mention to Tony and Aidan Brown realising the dream of a first marlin for Lee Lawson after 10 years on his boat Monaco!

The day one action really belonged to one angler being Karl Boielle off the trailer boat Happy Hour.  On a day that Karl couldn’t convince any of his mates to take a day off work, and determined not to miss a day on the water and ended up fishing solo. By mid-morning across the radio came “Happy Hour hooked up” not long after the message that Karl had just tagged a striped marlin.  We didn’t need to wait much longer before we heard “Happy Hour hooked up” again, and yes the result was another tagged striped marlin. In the last few hours of daylight Karl was trolling home reflecting on a great day when “bang” a strike on the short corner, this time a Blue Marlin!  What an amazing day!

The winning fish this year came off the trailer boat Night Mair with Wilson Crocker being one of the first time anglers, taking grand honours and ‘first place heaviest billfish’ with a mighty 250.4kg Blue Marlin.  The team on Night Mair had spent the night before sword fishing all night and were  a bit sleep deprived in the morning.  But it only took them five minutes of trolling before this massive Blue Marlin helped them shake off the morning fuzz.  A stubborn fish the fight lasting almost 4 hours!

The next biggest fish was another special Blue Marlin weighing 233.9kg to Alana Duncan off the boat Riba.  Alana’s fish had died during the fight and she spent a gruelling 3.5hrs getting this fish back to the surface in stand up equipment, one heck of an effort that gained her the ‘Heaviest fish for a lady angler and second heaviest billfish.  In third place was Mikey Lee’s 181.3kg on board Fascination 2, a beautiful looking fish and a great way for the team to round of a very successful tournament season.

Some nice Mahimahi this year in the 11-12kg range this year with the largest going to Louise Stewart off Ocean Monarch with a 12.26kg hen taken from the Stoney Creek grid.  Another incredible highlight for the tournament was the absolute beast of a Shortbilled Spearfish weighing 34.5kg on 24kg by junior angler Ezra Keenan claiming first place in this shortbilled section. This one being a pending Club, New Zealand and World Record!

Thanks to all of our anglers, the lucky ones and not so lucky for fishing this wonderful event, also a big thankyou to Omokoroa ITM, Hool Marine, Petroluem Logistics, Glass Art and NZ Bayfisher!

STONEY CREEK ONE BASE 2019 – ROUND UP!

Who could have picked 2019 was going to be such a boomer.  Its takes a little bit of everything for an event to come together to be great.  Good anglers, some good fish,  a bit of nice weather, supportive sponsors, you need a good team behind the scenes, a good tournament radio operator but most of all you need a bit of luck!  This One Base and our 30^th Anniversary year we got a bit of luck and all the other elements came together in what turned many are calling one of the best One Base Tournaments in recent times.

This year with the wild card anglers the One Base hosted 115 teams comprised of 407 anglers everyone leaving the Tauranga entrance on Wednesday 6^th March in what was a spectacular shotgun start. The four day forecast looked really settled apart from a spike on the Friday afternoon which was actually “bang on” so at least this forecasting allowed the teams to make plans to stay safe.

The first day set the scene well with Fascination 2 tagging and releasing a striped marlin as did Crank later on in the day.  Young junior Angler Tom Fowler did exceptionally well landing a very respectable 19.3kg kingfish giving him the ‘first junior to weigh an eligible fish award’, while Neil Beattie weighed in what turned out to be the heaviest snapper for the event at 10.26kg.  The team on Bar Tender had the “midas touch” after winning the team beverage crate proceeded on day one to catch and weigh the comps first marlin with a 210.9kg Blue Marlin out of the Stoney Creek grid.  Angler Brad Pedersen later when on to win the Shimano Raffle taking home Shimano electric reel, as well as owner Steve Prole picking up second place in the striped marlin section with a 142kg fish.

Day two results were busy with the ‘after 6pm’ weigh station activity the evening before.  Strangely the marlin just got bigger into the night!  A 140.5kg Blue Marlin for Jason Eynon on Sundance Kid, then a wonderful 226.7kg blue marlin to Ian Thomas on Cobra, with festivities topped off with a whopping 300.2kg Blue Marlin to Adam Milnes off the boat Black Label, this one carrying through to be the biggest gamefish for this year’s One Base.  Adam backed his marlin up with a beautiful 41.2kg Yellowfin Tuna both caught out of Furuno Blue Beam grid, this fish taking first place in the Tuna section.

Kristen Zaloumis managed a nice 110.35kg Striped Marlin for their boat Outer Limits, awarding Kristen the Heaviest Fish caught by a Lady Angler in the One Base.  Okura 2 also made weigh in and once again did well in the kingie section placing Butch Waterhouse in first place in the kingie section with a 20.82kg fish and team mate Kerry Clark taking out both first and second in the measure section.  In the longest Snapper section Tony Wood took out the competition with a 79cm moocher, with Aidan Brown doing really well in second with a 72cm.

Day Three and the teams hunkered down in preparation for the wind which seemed to hit the teams down east a little earlier.  Mahimahi from both Sansparel and Riba caught the day before arrived in, the biggest a lovely 13.52kg fish for John Mertrom.  Draydon Layne fought, landed and weighed a beauty short billed spearfish of 23.7kg that managed to hold off the others for first place in the Spearfish category as well as giving him the heaviest fish for a junior.  A real bonus to this catch is the Spearfish is a pending junior record for 60kg and pending NZ Record!  Another solid fish was the 23.7kg Albacore caught by Kevin Houlton on Forte, this one narrowly missing being another Club record.  Congrats to the In Pursuit team weighing a fine 126.7kg Stripey, but unfortunately were eclipsed when the winning 171.6kg Striped Marlin was weighed by Brent Hogg off Valhalla, this fish taking first place in the NZ Heaviest list for the season to date, and for the One Base it was fittingly the winning Striped Marlin!  Great fish guys! Well done also the team off Fascination 2 weighing in a beutiful 226kg Blue marlin as well as tagging two other and t&r spearfish to give them champion boat for 2019!

Day Four being a shorter day still had plenty of action on the radio.  Bar Tender manged their last minute 142kg Striped Marlin, and Nora threatened the Spearfish category with a nice 21.3kg fish, while Ryan Kahn weighed in his solid 192.9kg Blue Marlin off Ocean Pacific unfortunately not even making the top three!  Of course all the tag and release marlin paperwork came through totalling 16 TnR marlin (5 of which were Blues) all of these anglers receiving a gold Tiagra 50W thanks to Bay Insurance Brokers.

It was a solid four days of competition with good weather and some world class fish and home for some of the best fisherman in New Zealand here competing.  In short this year was nothing short of magical!  Thank you to all of our sponsors and supporters, thank you to out TSFC team here and last but certainly not least a massive thankyou to Deryk for a wonderful job over VHF Ch 3 for the four days.  SEE YOU ALL NEXT YEAR!

ALL ABOUT CONSTRUCTION

GAME ON TOURNAMENT REPORT 2019

The Game On Tournament was really well attended this year with 153 anglers up from 97 last year. Great to have All About Construction back on board thanks to Phil Eynon.

With early season striped marlin, blue marlin and spearfish all lodged firmly in this year’s fish catch it was clear the start to the season was well ahead of schedule leading up to this year’s Game On Tournament.  So with the Clubs foyer chocka full of catch boards and teams brimming with optimism about the three days ahead, it was little wonder the ensuing Calcutta auction raised a good deal of cash, in fact over $10,000!

The Calcutta cash could only be won by the successful bidders who had won the boats who would accumulated the most billfish points.  First place would claim 65% of the purse, second place 15% and 3^rd 10%, with 10% going to the Club. To explain the Calcutta briefly, Billfish points could be accumulated in two ways.  Weighing a fish; where by the fishes weight is times by 100 and then divided by the line weight.  The second way is to release a tagged billfish (blue/black sword or striped marlin) all worth 400 points irrespective of size, with a tagged s/b spearfish also worth 150 points.

This year we had a few new faces involved in event! A big thank you must go to Alistair Beer for his silky smooth auctioneering skills and of course to all of those anglers new and returning that got involved in the bidding.  It was also nice to welcome Burger Fuel on board who were flat our marketing and giving away their catch of the day burgers!

Now the $10k Calcutta sum clearly provides more than enough incentive for teams to fish hard and that’s what was going to be needed as the weather forecast had again looked to play some dirty tricks.

Stronger winds than expected made for challenging fishing conditions on the first day (Friday) but a hot bite and plenty of action on the water more than made up for the weather.  As forecast Saturday delivered really nice conditions but the action slowed to snail pace, then Sunday the wind came up again and the fishing seemed to deteriorate with few opportunities for those boats out braving the windy SW conditions.

Regardless of our weather woes the comp in the end did see some very nice fish caught (and lost).  Most notably the team of Andros’s landing a nice blue marlin 191kg, all of this to first time angler Carl Shannon.  Good to see the new engine is pulling the fish guys!  A beautiful Big Eye Tuna of 72.6kg to the First Class team and again this was a first time angler Amanda Thompson responsible for this superb effort.  The team on Ocean Pacific never far from the action picked up second place tuna with a fine 17.04kg Albacore, and after two years of hard luck stories the team on Erice Marie showed there not just here to make up the numbers securing a nice stripey to take first place in this section. The s/b spearfish section was won by Deryk Nielsen fishing on Black Label, while two others were tagged by teams chasing the calcutta points.

It is always nice to see plenty of fish being released and this was the case again this year with Free Flo, Riba, Happy Hour, Kyrenia all tagging marlin this year.  In the Calcutta results the decision to tag fish paid big dividends for the team on Kyrenia this year who managed to edge out Andros for first place, and a three way tie for third between Freeflo, Happy Hour and Riba all splitting the Calcutta prize pool of over $10k.

Well done to all of our anglers who were looking a little battle worn on Sunday, it was awesome having you all back at the Club enjoying the hospitality, spot prizes and relaxing! Of course another big shout out to our amazing sponsors All About Construction, Wet & Forget, Burger Fuel, NZ Bayfisher Mag, Glass Art and Shimano.  Double thumbs UP !!!

GAME ON RESULTS and all the PHOTOS HERE!

2019 Hirepool Trailer Boat Tournament Report

It was wonderful again to see the Fishing and Adventure syndicate of sponsors back again this year, and with such great sponsor support it was obvious the prize table would again be stacked high with incredible prizes.

Its seems every year the trailer park on Sulphur Point just gets busier and busier, and this year was no exception.  With stellar weather from Boxing day the ramps were once again heaving with activity and with marlin and spearfish being caught in the days prior to the event there was certainly a good buzz around the timing.

Once again this year the early focus was on the weather and with a bit of a blow showing 15-18knots from the south west, and it really didn’t look bad enough for a postponement.  Annoyingly Friday, our first fishing day greeted us with a strong wind advisory but with anglers already on the water, it was up to our skippers to make the right safety calls for the teams and assess the changing conditions themselves.  The sou’wester did still provide plenty of fishing opportunities with many of the species on our schedule inshore.

So all in all 126 anglers battled what were some challenging conditions.  155 fish were entered into the tournament, one third of these in the Honda Measure and Release section.  The longest kingy stretching out to 113cm for angler David Hunt while the longest Snapper was caught measured at 72cm and released to claim 1^st place longest snapper!

In the weigh sections the heaviest Snapper was caught by Scott Parry from the Fishing & Adventure show weighing in at 9.78kg (Scott also took 3^rd with a 5.36kg fish!) and junior Tyler Speed featured strongly with a 7.005kg snapper.

It was nice to see the wreck fish category competitive again this year with 14 fish the best a 17.2kg Bluenose caught by Joe Gordon of Mangawahi Mitress.  Darren Richardson managed the winning the kahawahi and Sharryn Clark the biggest in the Skipjack section.

Congratulations also to Hayden Speed and the Mayhem team for their fantastic hero shot winning the Raymarine Hero Shot for 2019, and likewise congratulations to all of our anglers for competing and enjoying this years Hirepool Trailer Boat event. Finally a shout out to all those skippers who did a great job keeping your people safe on the water!

To see all the tournament and hero images check out the Tauranga Sport Fishing Club Facebook Page!

RESULTS 2019

A massive thank you to our wonderful sponsors Black Magic, Okuma, Honda Marine, Raymarine, Surtees Boats, Topcatch, Wet & Forget and NZ Bayfsher Magazine.

DECORO SNAPPER KINGFISH TOURNAMENT 2018 REPORT

IN CONJUNCTION WITH ROCKGAS TAURANGA.

With the weather gods smiling on us for the weekend we were able to confidently call this years Snapper Kingfish tournament ON.  However those same weather gods played a sneaky hand by serving up close to 20 knots of wind on a variable 5 knot forecast for the first day.  With teams tucked away at Motiti, Mayor and White island the later part of Saturday, these northerlies sent many teams in early and forced the others to seek a bit of shelter. Sunday was much better and allowed the boats to spread out and with this came some stunning results with the hard work that was put in.

Overall the fishing reports varied considerably from team to team with many finding the coastal fishing tough over the sand.  This was in contrast to those teams targeting snapper over reef structure with reports of spectacular soft-baiting and solid snapper in the 40-60cm region both around Motiti and Mayor with Plate Island fishing pretty well also. It was so good to see more and more anglers releasing their Snapper and nice for our sponsors and us as organisers to know these events don’t always need to impact heavily on local fish stocks to be regarded as a successful event.  The top three release Snapper were absolute beauties measuring 74, 75 and 76cm respectively with the winning fish going to Aidan Brown of In Pursuit.  In the weigh category there were only 15 fish weighed (versus 18 in the M&R!) With the best of these pulling the scales down to 10.695kg and caught by Jamie Lee fishing on Reel Heaven.

The kingfish fishing had been pretty good at Mayor and Schooner over the weekend, with anglers talking about how the top-water fishing had been hotting up and how much of the fishing had been extremely visual.  The flip side of this is the bronze whaler populations anecdotally looked to have increased with many hooked kingies this past weekend unfortunately falling to these veracious predators.  The longest kingie category this year went to Kyle Erikson fishing off Elevar (114cm) who not only picked up an incredible Accurate fishing combo but also took home the Dave Foley Memorial trophy.  Only 2 kingies weighed in versus 22 in the measure and release, with the biggest weighed being awarded to Jason Hamlyn fishing off Riba.

It was great to see so many of you back at the Club on Sunday for prize giving and enjoying the lucky draws and atmosphere.  Finally a massive thankyou to our sponsors namely Decoro, Rockgas Tauranga, NZ Bayfisher Magazine and Okuma NZ!

2018 Snapper Kingfish Results

2018 INTERCLUB REPORT

After the disappointing lost last year there was always a steely resolve among our anglers, that this year would be different.  The comment was made by so many anglers that the great prizes on offer from Penn and Decoro were only really a distraction in terms of what was the goal, that being to bring the Shield back to our Club.

The rivalry between the Mount Club and ours is truly alive and well with the competition now into its 24^th year.  Club dominance has been a hall mark of this competition with early domination from Tauranga then for a long spell the Mount dominated 2007-2014, the Tauranga SFC only picking up in a win in 2015, a cancelation in 2016 and then the loss in 2017.

This year the fishing was tough going, however there were some outstanding results. Notably the sizable snapper this year, with all the top ten being over 5kg and the top 3 all over 9kg. The crew on King Hit were on fire dominating both the Kingfish and Trevally sections.  The Tarakihi were also dominated by Tauranga boats as was the Gurnard and John Dory categories.  The communication this year among our interclub group was outstanding ensuring no holes in the species schedule were left unplugged.

So…this year I’m thrilled to announce that the Tauranga Club has won back the Interclub shield in emphatic fashion.  Turning up with 99 anglers versus 54 for the Mount, it was always going to be a tough task for the defenders.  After the dust settled it was a complete white wash with the Tauranga SFC recording 291 points versus the Mount’s 134.

Having so many keen and committed anglers on the water this year was the difference.  Now with two trophy victories a piece for each Club over the last five years, the flip flop nature of who wins the Shield only makes the importance grow year on year.  The sense of pride among our group was clear on Sunday evening, so well done everyone.  So enjoy that well-deserved beer, and let’s enjoy the moment BUT make it a promise to return next year and defend our log’o wood.

SEE ALL THE PHOTOS HERE!

Hunting & Fishing SNAPPER CLASSIC Report June 2018

Well we were blessed finally with a fine weekend (after weeks of dud’s) that co-insided with the Hunting & Fishing Snapper Classic, this giving 75 anglers the opportunity to get out there a good couple of days on the water.  This past Saturday was an absolute pearler that saw the ramps teaming with trailers and the marina carpark full.

So with such nice weather the teams headed out far and wide as well as some targeting the coastal shallows.  Both Motiti and Mayor were reasonably tough going until a late afternoon bite opened the flood gates on plenty of 2-3kg fish.

On the coast down towards Rogers Road it was the kayaking duo named “Downtown” using nothing but paddle power who secured all of the biggest snapper, the biggest a 7.715kg for the comp.   1^st, 2^nd and 3^rd places all went to Michael Brown and average weight to Ross Brown in what commonly known as a white wash!…well done fellas.  Just goes to show you don’t need a big flash boat to catch quality fish.

Well done to Mitchell Tombleson releasing the biggest snapper for the event, a 75cm beauty.  It always pleasing to the M&R section getting more popular with plent of fish released this year to fight another day!.

Off shore, the deepwater bluenose cleaned up the wreck fish section. Well done to Vaughan Craven and Graham Burns placing first and 2^nd with Trevor McLaughlin taking out the terakihi section with a 1.55kg fish.

So a wonderful few days on the water for most, with most anglers returning with a healthy feed for the families. Well done to all of those anglers that weighed fish and of course a big thankyou to the team at Hunting and Fishing Tauranga (and Scotty for making it to prize giving!) The Finnor, Daiwa, Coleman prizes went down a treat as did the stunning H&F clothing!

2018 GFAB TRAILERS BROADBILL CHALLENGE REPORT

The stage was set again for that exciting time of year when the 80W mono sets get switched out for the deep drop sets, concrete bricks and diamond lights.  The Broadbill Challenge was back and with an exciting twist, with the help of Bay Insurance Brokers we were going to offer a $10,000 cash prize for the first Sword caught over 250kg.  Of course the fish needed to be caught inside chart and in accordance with IGFA rules.  Statistically it looked like a longshot as there had only ever been one fish caught over this mark in the Clubs 95 year history, this going to L Chinn back in 1969. What we do know is that these fish exist in our waters and although not abundant, it presented the perfect challenge.  Better yet, it was considered by a few that the 250kg benchmark was somewhat achievable, with the recent improvements in our knowledge of these fish, the gear and of course the techniques.

Clearly many of you thought that this target was achievable at this year as this year we had 89 hardy anglers sign up for the challenge versus just 39 last year.  The wonderful prizes were also somewhat of a motivator from Decoro, Stoney Creek and NZ Bayfisher and of course those fantastic trophies from Glass Art.

May 1^st and day one produced a lovely day seeing a few boats rolling out and it didn’t take long for the phone to ring with news of the first tagged sword down in FMT Mortgage Finance #13 by Cody Joss on board Matilda, this one hooked at 11.20am and taking just 20minutes to the boat.  What a great start!  Things stepped up a gear at 3.15pm that same day with a call from the lads on King Hit indicating that they were hooked up to a nice one in High Duty Plastics #24.  This was landed just before 6pm and with the guys struggling to get it in the boat, questions on landed started to fly as to whether this was a contender for the 10k!  Late Tuesday night this fish pulled the gantry scales down to 174.7kg in what could be described as almost the perfect start to the event and the bar being set high from the first day.

The next weekend although the weather was not the kindest the entire comp was “chomping at the bit” to get out and it looked like that many of the teams were making the effort.  The 4/5^th May produced some nice fish over the weekend with Dayle Lee getting a nice fish on a night bait. I understand this was the first time the guys on Fin Finder had tried this, and boom! This fish tipped the scales at 93.1kg.  Brothers in Arms struck the next day with an almost identical fish weighing 92.8kg landed by Jason Beck after an hour on the rod, all these again out of High Duty Plastics #24.  Further north Jans Decision also had a bite at 2.45pm, this one being tagged after an hour and eventually ended up being the last tagged for the comp.

The 12^th May saw Isaac Holmberg on Elevar hit the mark hooking and landing a nice 98.9kg broadbill out of Walling Enterprises.

The weather interruptions have become standard part of trying to fish through May, with the regular storms causing frustrations as anglers become shore bound and we had to wait another week for the next proper window before the next fish, and the wait was worth it!!!

  For more photos CLICK HERE

Decoro SNAPPER KINGFISH TOURNAMENT 2017 RESULTS

Thanks to everyone that turned out for this years Snapper Kingfish Tournament. After a shocking weekend last weekend and the postponement to the 25/26th we were blessed with a much kinder forecast and some pretty good fishing.  The boat ramps were chocka this past weekend and when we get the good weather the fishing options and possibilities open up with teams spreading themselves right through Chart 54 in pursuit of the longest and heaviest snapper and kingfish.

This year was the second year of the measure and release format with Decoro and its proving to be a winner. Not only do we kill fewer fish, in general we find that the bigger fish are being released as the best prizes reward the longest fish versus weighing. We are thrilled to be running an event with 124 anglers who are “on-board” with this concept and it’s a great look for the Club to be running events such as these.

Congratulations to all of the winners also to those that just turned out, got among the fishing action and just enjoyed yet another great comp at the Club !

A massive thanks to Kane and Gina from Decoro for all of your assistance with the fantastic prizes, also Jodie from NZ Bayfisher Magazine Stu and Karina of Rockgas Tauranga  for the ongoing support!

Snapper-Kingfish 2017 RESULTS